1. A new Logo and Name.

It’s one of those i say You-Nee-Fee you say You-Nee-Fy moments. Partly due to the fact that the spelling is so bahasa baku you want to say You-Nee-Fee, but it’s really UNIFY. Get it? And  that’s because TM is unify-ing :

2. A lot of devices

You’ll need a BTU as a modem to welcome these shiny new bits to your home.  The Residential Gateway to broadcast these bits all over your home. A DECT phone to give you VoIP calls. And an exciting Set-Top-Box that will push TV bits to your existing or potentially HD TV. There are new packages with :

3. VIP Pricing

I’m not joking. The plans are called VIP Plans – for Video, Internet, Phone. There’s 3 plans -

As is the trend they are capped plans. VIP5 @60GB/month , VIP10 @90GB/month, VIP20@120GB/month.  You get free calls to all TM landlines,10 sen/min flat to all mobiles and non TM landlines. Other standard goodies include 2GB email space and streamyx zone hotspots. You get HyppTV – which is IPTV, with the following pilot channels -

It’s really an uphill climb to match Astro’s vast arsenal of licensed and homegrown content. But for a start not too bad for a bundled internet service.

4. Should i get it?

The answer is obvious yet ironic. it is priced so you will switch (from streamyx!) if you are a typically desperate malaysian surfer. A current streamyx 1MB combo plan with voice line cost around RM110. You pay RM40 more to get standard IPTV, TM Hotspot access (useful for some) and most importantly 5MB speeds on a new network. Assuming you download torrents of standard fare (no HD stuffs!) and does moderate youtubing, 60GB cap a month is probably just right.

Instinctively like i did, i suggest you check this :

wow shit – I did 141 GB of torrents last 31 days on streamyx, admittedly quite a lot of HD content for my new HDTV. IMAGINE what i can do on a high speed broadband .. NOT! Back to reality, i would say that if you really need to cap make sure you can uncap first. Customers must first have that choice, to pay (i can already hear screams but that’s life).

As for IPTV – there definitely won’t be people dropping Astro en masse at this stage. If they hook up the content more to match my RM49.50 minimum subscription with Astro, i just might give TM the money. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon.

5. Availability

Tough Luck – i’m at the bottom of the list. You might want to check availability .

See you in Q4 for a verdict!  Meantime leave a note about your Unifi experience ….

To see the preparation of the meal however, is a testament to the preservation of the Hakka culture, and of our tastebuds in the future.

The dish begins with a preparation of many fragrant greens and condiments

which must all be finely chopped, and calls for a whole clan of knife wielding family members :

The vegetables are then simply fried with garlic. A special stock is made from ikan bilis, sesame seed, peanut, tea leaves and vege all blended together. In the old days, this would have called for some mortar and pestle action, but in these modern days convenience calls for the use of the electric blender, lest we are still grinding for 70 hungry people at nightfall.

All the laborious effort results in a medley of finely prepared vegetables and stock, to be eaten pored over rice with a sprinkle of peanut to taste.

As it turned out, this one tasted different from my first experience, and the authenticity of a home-made lui char meal sure beats the hell out of any you can buy out there. Would you like it? I would say that it is an acquired taste. If you have a liking for mint and fragrant leaves, with a burst of peanut-y crunchiness and slow explosion of taste from the many fresh ingredients, you would definitely want to try this!

The family reunion is not complete without some tong yuen, or glutinous rice balls to end the affair. I didn’t manage to catch my mom-in-law making it like last year, but with her Kaizen approach to cooking, this time round we get all organic BLUE tong yuen made from the natural colors of bunga telang.

NOW that i’ll have to try!

Typica specializes in drip/syphon coffee. I find it a great match for iced coffee. Just a sip and you come to the realization that the kopi O ping you’ve had the other day was .. distastefully unpure.

Iced Drip Coffee

Sin Hong – admiring his expensive coffee

I went on to order a cake. Some are better than others but generally homemade and all taste above average.

Chocolate and Marble Cheese Cake – anxiously awaiting coffee

To get a glimpse of the coffee making process, order one of the “blends”, a concoction of beans and insists on it done using syphon drip, instead of normal filtered coffee. You will soon be chanced with a whiff of the coffee beans that will make your drink.

Coffee Beans for Inspection

Take a seat at one of the bar top stools and observe ….

Fresh coffee beans are grinded

The beans are mixed into the upper chamber of the syphon where it is boiled in a controlled manner to bring out the taste

The coffee is stirred and timed by smell

When ready, the coffee is allowed to filter down

All the lab like apparatus gives you a cup of syphon coffee :

A cup of Syphon Coffee

The coffee’s pricey (expect RM14 for Syphon) but is safely better than any filtered/drip coffee out there. But since i like mine with milk i miss the crema and the texture of a cuppa done through an expresso machine. Ultimately – how many shops can you count in KL that laboriously cooks up coffee one at a time for you, with a passion and conviction that theirs is the best? That perhaps is worth the price of the experience.

My parents, as are most of the first/second generation Chinese community in Malaysia (My dad is 2 years shy of 80 and rode the seas to Malaysia from Fujian province when he was 2) are mostly into Taoism, mixed with elements of Buddhism.

Having some decorative fun with my nephew Rong

Like all things in life, Ching Ming takes on a different meaning when you’re older. While i am a self proclaimed agnostic,this has been an occasion where we used to have everyone in my family of 9 attend. And with many of my siblings away for work or migrated, and the passing of the older generation, the people who joins in gets scarcer by the years.

My Grandpa’s grave with the morning sun breaking. The colored paper has it’s roots from a legend to mark the presence of the next of kin.

My dad will normally talk of his deceased parents as if they were there – bringing back years of memories and history about our family – a poignant reminder that one day, he himself yearns to be remembered the same way. It makes all the incessant spewing of carbon dioxide from the burning of sacrificial papers worthwhile.

My cousin preparing for an ancestral offerings of joss-sticks, rice, fruits and tea.

Is this religious? i think not. Just like any other chinese festival,it is simply a gathering of family and relatives to reminisce and to give thanks, moments which are precious in our busy lifes. Like everything else,the symbolism of the act is meaningful but only if you subscribe to it. One thing’s for sure we’re all mortal beings – what nature taketh, nature giveth ~